Since it opened out of his house about three years ago, close to 20 men have passed through, he said. Among them was a “father with two children, a one-year-old girl and a nine-year-old boy and he was fleeing a violent, alcoholic wife.”

Absent of federal or provincial funding, Mr. Silverman said he just can’t keep up with the grocery, heat and other bills associated with running the shelter. He said he sold his home last week.

Greg Fulmes for National Post

While awareness of domestic abuse has led to hundreds of shelters and myriad resources for women, few if any can be accessed by male victims, said Don Dutton, a University of British Columbia psychology professor who has written several books and dozens of papers on domestic violence issues.

“In Canada, they’re stuck with a Marxist gender model and that’s never going to change,” he said, explaining that the current system defines “male and female relationships where men are the bourgeois group with the power and women as the proletariat with no power.”

On self-reported surveys, men are about as likely as women to say that they have been the victims of domestic abuse, although the abuse reported by women tends to be more severe.

Yet of the incidents reported to police, the agency found eight out of 10 involve female victims. Women are also much more likely than men to be sexually assaulted or killed by their partners.

However, the statistics do suggest that there are male victims as well, and far fewer places for them to turn.

Twenty years ago, Mr. Silverman said he was the victim of an abusive wife.

“When I went into the community looking for some support services, I couldn’t find any. There were a lot for women, and the only programs for men were for anger management,” he said. “As a victim, I was re-victimized by having these services telling me that I wasn’t a victim, but I was a perpetrator.”

Silverman eventually created a support network for male victims of domestic violence online, and opened MASH.

If a man is abused, “where does he go for support? If he calls the police, studies have shown that there’s an 80% chance that he’ll be arrested. If he calls any support services in his town, it’s primarily just for women, not for me.”

Alex Cameron, the male domestic abuse outreach program coordinator at the Calgary Counselling Centre, said the problem is “definitely under reported.”

“The problem is that male victims generally don’t report at the same level as women, so there’s not as much awareness about what the numbers actually are for male victims and how they present,” he said.

Men are more likely to feel shame about their situation. Abuse is more likely to be seen as emasculating or embarrassing, something men should get over and not talk about.

It doesn’t carry the same sort of weight, and it’s not accepted by society as being an issue

As a result, violence toward women tends to get the lion’s share of funding and attention.

The majority of men seeking counselling through the centre have suffered from psychological abuse, he said.

“It’s not spoken about. It doesn’t carry the same sort of weight, and it’s not accepted by society as being an issue.”

There are some resources available for men, but, he admits, “they are limited.”

In addition to counselling and outreach, the province has two shelter beds located in Strathmore, Alta., that are dedicated for male domestic abuse victims.

Mr. Dutton said men who seek help from social service agencies are often made to feel responsible for the abuse — or even to be accused of being the perpetrator.

“Men are, in effect, in the same position battered women were in back in the ’70s before there were any services.”

John Hutton, the executive director of the John Howard society in Manitoba, said few resources are available for men who have been victims of violence — even though many have suffered throughout childhood or in prison.

“It’s very hard to find the resources or the tools that our clients need. It doesn’t seem to be a high political priority.”